1. Technical Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to a video display system. More particularly, the present invention is directed to a method and system for displaying viewer-selected descriptive information associated with a “hot” video object and embedded in video data on the video display system.
2. Description of the Prior Art
In a digital world where information technology, consumer electronics and telecommunication products incorporate increasingly sophisticated technologies, Moving Picture Experts Group (i.e., MPEG) technology provides a proven mechanism to promote industry innovation. MPEG, a working group of International Organization for Standardization/International Electronics Commission (i.e., “ISO/IEC”), develops the international standards for compression, decompression, processing, and coded representation of moving pictures, audio and their combination. One of the latest standard developed by MPEG is the MPEG-4 standard—formally designated by the ISO/IEC as ISO/IEC 14496—which provides an object-based framework for video representation that is well suited for encoding separate visual objects and associated audio objects into MPEG-4 video data for display on a video display system. The MPEG-4 as an accepted and widely used standard among application developers, service providers, content creators and end-users alike.
The MPEG-4 standard (i.e., ISO/IEC 14496) is an enabling technology that facilitates access to the visual objects for both natural (recorded via a video camera) video data and synthetic video data (generated via computer), and associated natural and synthetic sounds for various applications such as digital storage media, the Internet, various forms of wired or wireless communications, and the like. MPEG-4 enables the developers, the service providers, the content creators and the end-users to manipulate the video data as a form of computer data and to store the video data on various storage media, transmit and receive the video data over existing and future networks, and distribute video data over existing and future broadcast channels. The applications of MPEG-4 standard cover, but are not limited to, Internet multimedia; interactive video games; interpersonal communications such as video-conferencing, video-phone, and the like; interactive storage media such as optical disks; multimedia mailing; networked database services; remote emergency systems; remote video surveillance; wireless multimedia; and multimedia.
Notwithstanding the fact the MPEG-4 is an enabling technology, there is a need in the art for providing a system and method for handling the display of descriptive information associated with a defined “hot” video objects embedded in video data on a video display device.